Police

07 October 2008
The Metropolitan Police Service has been plunged into crisis after Sir Ian Blair, the Met’s commissioner and Britain’s most senior police officer, was forced to resign by London mayor Boris Johnson.

19 June 2004
"WHY IS this still going on so many years after the case of Stephen Lawrence? I don't think the police have learned the lessons. It's been swept under the carpet." So says Michael Abatan, brother of Jay, a black man who died after being attacked by a gang of white men in Brighton on 24 January 1999. The family have spent the last five years trying to get justice for Jay. Jay's death came two months after the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

02 March 2002
Nothing has changed. That is the damning verdict of Doreen Lawrence three years after the Macpherson report. That report was into the police handling of the 1993 racist murder of Doreen's son, black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

26 January 2002
So who's got it in for the Black Police Association (BPA)? The BPA is a moderate body. It was formed in 1993 to give black police officers and civilian staff a voice against the rampant discrimination built into the profession.

19 January 2002
"WE WILL never give up fighting to find out who killed my brother, Roger Sylvester. We have found out that the police, judiciary and Crown Prosecution Service all work together to protect a system of injustice" said Bernard Sylvester. He spoke out as over 100 people joined a candlelit vigil on Friday of last week called by the family of Roger Sylvester, a young black man who died in police custody three years ago.

22 December 2001
"Their decision effectively gives the police a licence to kill." That was how Irene Stanley described the ruling by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on Thursday of last week over her husband's death at the hands of police officers.

01 December 2001
"We want the truth-we want justice," pleaded Rhoda. She is the sister of Ricky Bishop, who died in police custody last Thursday. Rhoda was surrounded by a shocked group of family, friends and supporters who gathered to demand answers outside Brixton police station last Sunday. Ricky Bishop was a healthy 25 year old black man.

24 November 2001
Where could ordinary people be arrested and locked up indefinitely without a trial and without being told the charges against them? Britain, under home secretary David Blunkett's new anti-terrorism laws. It exposes the "democracy" Britain and the US claim they stand for around the world.

03 November 2001
The Scottish legal system was slammed as incompetent and racist by two official reports last week. The reports gave damning evidence of the way the police and courts failed to bring justice to the family of a young Sikh murder victim in Lanarkshire, Surjit Singh Chhokar.

03 March 2001
New Labour's ten-year crime programme, released on Monday, was full of "get tough" policies. It centred on 2,500 new prison places, 9,000 more police, allowing juries to see details of a defendant's convictions during a trial, and an army of private security guards backing up the police.

24 February 2001
A trial judge at Newport Crown Court recently claimed there was no racial motive in the horrific murder of Jan Marthin Passalbessy on 20 June 2000. This was despite hearing evidence that the four killers convicted of the murder had called their victim "nigger" and "black bastard" during the attack.

20 January 2001
High ranking officers have branded as "naive" a senior black officer's report into the police's treatment of Delroy Lindo. He is a friend of Winston Silcott, who is still wrongly imprisoned for murder. Tariq Ghaffur, the Met's deputy assistant commissioner, said in his report that Delroy suffered "systematic harassment" by the police and "negative stereotyping". Delroy has been stopped and searched 37 times by police since 1992. "Nothing has changed with the police," said Delroy. "The Met want to blame Ghaffur because some of the truth has come out in the report."